Reclaiming the place of a writer best known for depicting the lives of girls and women, as a groundbreaking writer about war.

War marked L.M. Montgomery’s personal life and writing. As an eleven-year-old, she experienced the suspense of waiting months for news about her father, who fought during the North-West Resistance of 1885. During the First World War, she actively led women’s war efforts in her community, while suffering anguish at the horrors taking place overseas. Through her novels, Montgomery engages directly with the global conflicts of her time, from the North-West Resistance to the Second World War. Given the influence of her wartime writing on Canada’s cultural memories, L.M. Montgomery and War restores Montgomery to her rightful place as a major war writer.

Reassessing Montgomery’s position in the canon of war literature, contributors to this volume explore three central themes in their essays: her writing in the context of contemporaneous Canadian novelists, artists, and poets; questions about her conceptions of gender identity, war work, and nationalism across enemy lines; and the themes of hurt and healing in her interwar works.

Drawing on new perspectives from war studies, literary studies, historical studies, gender studies, and visual art, L.M. Montgomery and War explores new ways to consider the iconic Canadian writer and her work.

Details

“L.M. Montgomery and War is a delight to read. The use of biography, journals, and historical context is admirable. The writing is clear and engaging, always with an eye towards the general readership that Montgomery engages, and the range of issues evoked by a focus on war in Montgomery’s work is truly amazing and illuminating.” Holly Blackford, Rutgers University “Andrea McKenzie and Jane Ledwell’s edited collection has much to offer anyone interested in how readers remember female authors who do not abide by the cultural scripts defining the topics appropriate to them.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly

Andrea McKenzie is an associate professor at York University and the editor of War-Torn Exchanges: The Lives and Letters of Nursing Sisters Laura Holland and Mildred Forbes.Jane Ledwell is co-editor of Anne around the World: L.M. Montgomery and Her Classic. She lives in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.

Contents

Figures vii

Acknowledgments ix

Plates follow page 38

IntroductionANDREA MCKENZIE AND JANE LEDWELL

PART ONE: THE CANONS OF WAR

1 “Some Great Crisis of Storm and Stress”: L.M. Montgomery, Canadian Literature, and the Great War JONATHAN F. VANCE 41